There are more women over 50 in the world today than men. There are numerous reasons for this situation, one of which is death due to wars and conflicts. Given this statistic, one would think that life is easier for women than men however, before becoming women, females must first journey through a minefield of gender discrimination. 

Lest we forget; the concept of gender equity in society is not universal accepted or even a consideration. In a lot of societies, women and girls are still considered the property of men and are treated as second- and third-class citizens. According to statistics, up to 10 million girls per year will be at risk of child marriage. This further puts girls at risk of being the primary victims of sexual exploitation (72% of detected girl victims), while boys are mainly subjected to forced labour (66% of detected boy victims).

Globally, 1 in 4 girls (15-19) are not educated, employed or in a training program. The result is that less than 15% of girls in more than two-thirds of countries around the world are graduating from “STEM” programs, which are the fuel for the economic engines of most countries. In spite of these dire statistics, they are more than 1.1 billion girls who are poised to take on the future.

Every day, girls are breaking boundaries and barriers, tackling issues such as the ones mentioned above like child marriage, education inequality, violence, climate justice, and inequitable access to healthcare (vis-à-vis the current situation of instituting laws that were in effect before women were persons).Even the current Iranian uprising is due to female discrimination.

Individually, we may not care but as we can all see, the situation has global ramifications as women from all over the world are organizing demonstrations in support of the Iranian women. Mass migrations usually follow such uprisings as women and children try to escape these patriarchal authoritarian regimes. We are seeing similar issues on the continent of Africa as Sudan, Mali, Chad, Guinea and Burkina Faso have all experienced coups within the last 2 years. We would be remiss if we did not mention Nigeria's Chibok schoolgirls. Amongst all the other issues, political instability is one of the most unhelpful situations as it perpetuates some of the same actions noted. After centuries of effort, we have only begun to move the scale towards gender equality. One thing we know is that it will never move without effort.

That is why we need to support initiatives like the International Day of the Girl with this year's theme being - Our Time is now- our rights, our future. Now isn’t that the truth!